A lot of the losses that the Philadelphia Flyers have taken have had to do with defensive breakdowns and terrible reads. They don’t possess the most skilled back-end, they have a lot of so-so options that play regularly, and their top options that eat up the most minutes are either incredible or incredibly bad on any given night – there is no in between.
When they play teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Carolina Hurricanes, they get outmatched, outworked, outskilled, and completely exposed. Through no fault of their own, it’s a terribly constructed roster and injuries to key players have them shifting on a game-in-game-out basis.
Last night’s game against the Carolina Hurricanes went as expected but it was very hard to watch. Even though the Flyers mounted a frantic comeback attempt in the third period that fell one goal short again, the first 40 minutes were hard to overlook. Each and every one of the 6 goals scored by the Hurricanes in the first two periods were caused by players being out of position, not marking the right man, and/or turnovers. This game, more than any other, made it very clear that there is a lack of communication on the ice because every thing they did, every read they made, every skating stride they produced was awful and they left Samuel Ersson out to dry in his NHL debut. Ivan Provorov and Rasmus Ristolainen were the culprits on all but one goal and that eventually led to the benching of the latter in the third period.
On the first goal scored by Jesper Fast, his first in 17 games and on the Hurricanes first shot of the game we notice that Ivan Provorov was behind his net as he had Jordan Staal turning the corner to bear down on him. He had Rasmus Ristolainen on his right hand side for an easy pass, he could rim it around the boards to Wade Allison making the turn, or he could maybe even walk it out himself with Jordan Martinook paying more attention to Allison.
Instead, Provorov slowed down the pace with everyone else moving at normal speed, Staal made a quick cut towards the blue paint and Martinook stopped following Allison. Provorov decided to try to flip it over the stick of Staal and past Martinook to Allison. The play failed and Martinook made a fantastic read to knock it down with one hand on his stick. Allison was too far to catch up to Jesper Fast, Scott Laughton went full head of steam towards Martinook, and Provorov and Ristolainen were caught in the middle. Provorov tried to block the shot but all he ended up doing was screening Ersson, who did not see the shot coming. 1-0 Carolina.
On the second goal with the Flyers shorthanded, they fell into this diamond formation, trying to block the shot instead of being aggressive and going towards the puck carrier – which is how most teams defend the Flyers power play. Our buddy Ristolainen returned to the scene of the crime as he was covering the same player that Provorov had marked. The puck handler has all day to make a play, make a move, and surveil the landscape to make a better decision. The laid back penalty kill had allowed, not only the puck handler to be wide open, but the point man to shift across for a potential one-time blast, and allowed the player at the far post on Ersson’s blocker side to be left untouched in case the puck handler, in this case Necas, to thread the needle.
Necas does exactly that as he set up Noesen for a one-time blast that went wide. Now because the Flyers aren’t spread out, the Hurricanes got to the loose puck quickly and set up again and once again Ristolainen went for the wrong player – he went towards the same player Patrick Brown was covering – as he left Noesen, the eventual scorer, all alone in front of Ersson for a deflection and/or a screen. Provorov also didn’t do a good job at checking his surroundings and tried to make the same block he attempted on the first goal but all it does is screen the goaltender’s vision. However, that’s a play he makes because Ristolainen was caught napping. 2-1 Carolina.
With less than a minute on the clock, the last thing the Flyers needed was for the Hurricanes to get an even bigger momentum shift heading into the intermission. As the puck was dumped in, Ristolainen allowed Martinook to go around the net untouched. He didn’t try to use his body and only stick tapped him on the gloves which didn’t alter his position or momentum in the slightest. When the puck was initially dumped in, Ristolainen shifted his strides to go behind Martinook instead of in front of the player, allowing him to make whatever move he wanted unscathed.
Martinook then moved closer to Nick Seeler after making the turn around the net. Seeler tried to cut him off but the Hurricane swung a pass in front of the net to Jesper Fast who was left completely unmarked. Both Patrick Brown and Zack MacEwen were stuck in no man’s land and Ristolainen was caught trying to follow Martinook again who was on the other side of the net. Both he and MacEwen realized Fast was behind them a little too late and their poke check attempts went to no avail as Ersson got tagged again – the puck did take a deflection off Ristolainen before going in. All 5 Flyers didn’t notice Jesper Fast slowly creeping in as they were puck watching with less than a minute remaining in the period. 3-1 Carolina.
After cutting the deficit to 1, Morgan Frost had a pretty good scoring opportunity but was stopped by the shoulder of Antti Raanta. The aggressive nature of the whole play allowed 3 more white jerseys to follow Frost’s suit. Unfortunately, Andrei Svechnikov cleared the porch quickly and jettisoned the rebound out of the zone, which allowed Paul Stastny to roam into the zone and wait for reinforcements as the Flyers were caught. The good thing this time was that Cam York was back as Ivan Provorov was in the offensive zone and had to hustle back from the blue-line. On their way back down the ice, both defensemen went towards Stastny instead of York making the aggressive approach on the veteran as he entered the zone with no black jerseys in sight. As Provorov neared, he didn’t look behind him to see where Necas and Svechnikov were, as he was too focused on Stastny as well.
York then made the move towards Stastny but it was a little too late as he decided what play he wanted to conduct with his teammates entering the zone with speed. He passed it Necas who had Provorov exactly where he wanted him : not close enough to him at all, so he could make a quick cut and drop it to Svechnikov who has a rocket of a shot. With no White jersey in sight to defend him, Svechnikov raced in behind Necas, received the pass and fired it through the legs of Provorov. Owen Tippett also didn’t read the play well as he dropped further behind both defensemen, even though he was the last one to arrive. He missed the boat on both defending either one of Necas or Svechnikov. 4-2 Carolina.
With the Flyers losing momentum, the dangerous line of Jordan Staal, Jordan Martinook, and Jesper Fast had another pressure-filled offensive zone shift. The puck was dumped in with Kevin Hayes losing the board battle to Martinook almost immediately. Hayes slowed down incredibly, while Martinook didn’t change his pace as they battled for the loose puck. 5 white jerseys convened on 3 black jerseys behind the net, leaving 2 black jerseys open and untouched at the point.
Due to this terrible positioning, the Flyers were in scramble mode as they tried to locate the puck and read what was going on, once the out-numbered Hurricanes won a board battle and rimmed it around the boards to the aforementioned point-men. Hayes was already in too deep, DeAngelo was behind the net and surrounded by 2 Black jerseys, Sanheim was probably the only one in position, while Joel Farabee and Travis Konecny were nowhere to be found.
As the play unfolded, Farabee was too slow in trying to pressure Brett Pesce at the point, Sanheim was covering his man in the faceoff dot, while both Tony DeAngelo and Kevin Hayes were tied up with Hurricanes. However once the shot was fired, Sanheim had Jesper Fast tied up – so no deflection – and DeAngelo had Jordan Staal in a 50/50 battle where he eventually missed the deflection because of a play made by DeAngelo, but Hayes completely lost his man and allowed Martinook to break free and get the deflection right in front of the goaltender. It was a very half hearted attempt at boxing him out and once he moved away from Hayes and closer to the crease, Hayes didn’t move or try recover. It was too late to do anything as he was playing too deep and had beaten him fair and square to get to the dangerous position on the ice. 5-2 Carolina.
And finally the infamous Ristolainen-injuring-Carter-Hart-goal. Ristolainen was in no man’s land trying to defend the shooter and the man near the post, even though he had Konecny there to help him. He ended up making a weird move where he stuck out his stick but moved his feet back as the pass made to the opposite point-man. The hulking defense-man noticed that Teuvo Teravainen was going to try and make a pass to Seth Jarvis, who was parked in front of the net. Not paying attention to Jesperi Kotkaniemi behind him, Ristolainen cross-checked Jarvis right into Carter Hart, who was sliding from post to post to defend the one timer.
Provorov in the meantime was just standing there, had his stick on the ice but wasn’t moving it, wasn’t trying to poke at anything, and wasn’t being active in the slightest and therefore allowed Jarvis to be in that position in the first place, unmarked. When the Hurricanes were moving the puck around, Provorov and Ristolainen got way too close and had both black jerseys behind them instead of in front of them – both players they needed to cover. When Provorov tried to go back to his forward, he just moved his body into his, rather than trying to box him out or tie his stick up. With both defensemen absentmindedly missing their plots, Teravainen was able to slide it over to Kotkaniemi – as the two net-front presence Hurricanes did they job at eliminating the 2 Flyers defensemen – who then had an open net to shoot at with Hart out of commission. 6-2 Carolina.
Ironically the Flyers didn’t allow another goal in the third, scored 3 of their own, and didn’t allow an empty-net goal even though they had the extra attacker for 2:42, all of this while Ristolainen was parked on the bench after a putrid 40 minutes. Provorov might’ve gotten away with some of his plays – at least for that game – but that’s one benching that would shock the bench more than anyone else. The first goal was definitely all on Provorov for trying to make a cute play instead of focusing on the easy play out of the zone. He gets himself in trouble when he tries to slow down the pace of the game, not realizing he’s the only one in slow motion, while everyone else is going at normal speed – essentially the defence version of Kevin Hayes. The rest of the goals he was either on the ice, played a hand in it, or played backseat culprit to Rasmus Ristolainen who might’ve played his worst game in a Flyer uniform with the exception of the 5th goal.
Not playing again until the 29th of December gives everyone much needed time off the ice to try and regroup after a rough start to the season. At one point Ristolainen looked good on the top pairing, but like everything else in Flyerdom, nothing good lasts more than a week or two, as everything seems to iron itself out in due time.
This isn’t the first game of the season where defensive breakdowns were the root cause of each and every goal, and it won’t be the last time, but it was just a lot more noticeable last night than in previous games. We can see why John Tortorella is always angry, rarely smiling, and calling out or benching players – they’re not playing the way they should be, not even close.
